The Weyburn Group Home Society is celebrating its 50th year of incorporation this year, and the entire community is invited to the party on September 6th from 1:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Weyburn Agricultural Society's Exhibition Hall.
The free event will feature bouncy houses, a petting zoo, face painting, and henna tattoos. There will also be cotton candy and mini donuts booths, a trade show featuring local vendors, as well as food trucks and concession stands throughout the day for those who want to purchase food and stay for the day.
Entertainment will be thanks to a DJ throughout the afternoon, followed by a break at 4:30 for speeches about the organization's history and a raffle draw at 5 p.m., with live music by the local band SWITCH to cap off the evening beginning at 5:30.
"Come and join us, if you're free on September 6th, bring your family down and join us for this wonderful celebration," invited WGHS Executive Director, Colin Folk.
He said there will be tables set up inside the hall, with the petting zoo located outside of the hall.
Raffle tickets are $10, for which two draws will be made for the prizes donated by local businesses: a Traeger smoker, and Roto molded cooler, and camping chairs. Tickets can be purchased by emailing WGHSraffle2025@outlook.com.
Folk said the prizes can be viewed on their Facebook page or at New Age Electronics.
"We've had some big sponsors that have provided the funding for this," he shared. "Local communities always support the Weyburn Group Home Society, and we wouldn't be able to do what we do without our businesses in town."
The raffle is part of ongoing fundraising efforts to help with the cost of a new wheelchair-accessible van, which they will need to purchase by the summer of 2026.
"About every 10 years they need to be replaced, and they come at a pretty high price of close to $100,000, so these types of fundraisers help us purchase and make sure that we have good vehicles for our people we support," Folk noted.
"We have four operational wheelchair accessible vans now. Some are just one person, where you can only transport one person in a wheelchair, and our other ones hold five to six, because we do a lot of transportation to the Wor-Kin Shop, or also to medical appointments or community outings. That's a very important piece of our agency, so we need to look at purchasing another one here in the next year, and this celebration will hopefully draw some attention to that."
He said that while the single-person wheelchair-accessible minivan is less cumbersome for navigating parking lots, such as for medical appointments or shopping trips, the buses help ensure more fuel-efficient transportation, given the WGHS's seven group homes and extensive SLP Program.
"A big part of our transportation is for work integrated services with the Wor-Kin Shop, we're transporting to and from there, but a lot of it is that they go for drives, and they like to go out on their day program because we also operate a small day program. There are community activities like going to River Park, Nickle Lake, things like that, so we use our vehicles multiple times per day."
Organizing for the September 6th event, he noted, has been a months-long effort of a planning committee made up of WGHS employees and managers, SLP employees, and board members.
Fundraising for the purchase of a new wheelchair-accessible van is seemingly endless for the WGHS, even with the opportunities to apply for funding through various grant opportunities and TeleMiracle, as well as contributions from silent donors, those who donate in memory of a departed loved one, and ongoing support from local businesses.